


Scars

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [5]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Bless my nerd brain, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I got my research from The Google.Com, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Period-Typical Medical Care, The one where Aramis and Milady are girlfriends, secrets and lies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:10:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4969366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Something to hang a story off, I suppose."</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Notes/Warnings: 
> 
> This is a bit less stand-alone than the others.
> 
> A brief scene of old-fashioned wound care (a bit gross). You can skip the worst by jumping from _... not a feather tickling her, but -_ to _He rested his inner wrist..._ and, er, avoiding the end notes. References to past injuries and the un-joyous times related to them. 
> 
> People in dishabille (and alone! oh the scandal my poor heart).

She drifted awake slowly, easily, in lavender scented sheets and friendly spring sunshine filtered through muslin curtains. Someone was whistling a country air about nightingales and roses, and the arch of her foot tickled. She smiled and sighed. "No, Olivier, stop that," she murmured sleepily, kicking out.

Then her eyes opened and a rockfall of memory dropped on her head. She shot upright. She was not in bucolic, banal (beautiful) Pinon, but an inn in rural Alsace. It was not her husband at the end of the bed, down to shirt-sleeves and braces, looking intently at her bare feet, but Aramis, her stray musketeer. And it was not a feather tickling her, but -

She snatched her foot back with a shriek, stared at the maggots crawling over a reddened wound on her instep in horror, and shook it desperately. "Get that filth off me!"

He stared at her reproachfully, then leaned forward to clamp one wide hand around her ankle, and used a set of iron tweezers to transfer the squirming grubs to a small tin. "You are worse than... " He frowned and then shrugged. "It matters not." At last he set down the tweezers and shut the lid with a snap. "This is why we strive to keep our wounds clean, Madame," he said, as he slathered on an ointment that smelled powerfully of turpentine and roses.

"I think I'm going to be ill."

"I have an appropriate receptacle. One moment." He rose from his stool and bustled quietly about the room, handing her an enamelled tin basin and averting his gaze as she settled her long chemise respectably over her shins and flicked up the sheet. What was in her stomach stayed down, perhaps fortunately, for she suddenly realised that she was very hungry.

He rested his inner wrist against her forehead and hummed a little. "You are very impertinent," she said.

"I am desolate." He handed her a steaming cup. "Drink."

"If this is more of your -"

"Tisane of yarrow. Soldier's woundwort. You burn with the embers of fever and this will help."

It tasted vile, but soothed her throat a little.

"Kitty will bring up some food soon."

Another rock of memory dropped on her head and she reached for her throat automatically. The velvet choker she remembered wearing last was gone. In its place was what felt like a strip of linen, tied at the side with a jaunty bow. She let her head fall back against the pillow. She was... tired of hiding the hanging scar with clever contrivances, so tired of brazening it out when someone noticed that part of her. "Who saw?" she asked dryly.

"Only I," Aramis replied. "And I am of no account. I am sorry, Madame," he added, regret in his black eyes. "You were breathing badly last night, and I had not known."

She stilled, fingertips still touching the bandage. He gazed back at her calmly.

"Will it scar?"

"Boys always seem to ask that question with more eagerness," he said, musing. "Something to hang a story off, I suppose. In answer, yes, though your stocking will cover it, and I doubt it will affect your gait once healed."

The corners of her mouth quirked down.

He hummed gently, then pulled the strings of his sleeve cuff, rolling it back to his forearm to show pale dents in the flesh of it. "A farmer's dog," he said. "Not my finest hour."

She cocked her head, and then opened the palm of her hand to show a white mark like a star, then flipped it to show its match between the bird-fine bones of her hand. "The second-to-last blow in a knife fight." (It had taken months to get the dexterity back, her fingers clumsy and half numb, and Richelieu had been furious. Fortunately she'd always been facile with the left, better with the left, but she had taken extra care not to displease her patron for some time.)

He lifted the tail of his shirt to show a long slash that curved across his ribs and around his side. "The farmer's scythe," he said gravely, "truly, it was an ignominious time."

She almost fingered her arm, where a faint pink disc was all that was left of that time she'd heated a penny red-hot and laid it over the half-made brand of a fleur-de-lis. (She'd been so angry then, was angry now, they'd dared to _mark_ her, track her white skin for a crime that didn't happen like they said it did, damn them, let her be judged for her _own_ sins -)

Aramis tugged the collar of his shirt to one side, baring the ball of his shoulder, where a livid circle signalled an old bullet wound. "The farmer's daughter," he said, with a faint smile that dented grooves in his cheeks. "Magnificent woman."

She snickered, and his smile widened.

She touched the bandage at her throat and said dreamily, "Once, I trusted a man to trust me."

His eyes crinkled at the corners.

He took her by the wrist, then, and guided her hand to the back of his head. Underneath the thick hair his scalp was rough and nubbled like a gravelled road. She considered him, as her fingers explored the damage. At last he broke away.

"These things happen," he said.

**Author's Note:**

>  _the half-made brand of a fleur-de-lis_ \- a nod of the head to book!Milady's Mark of Cain. You know what? Even if you take the Executioner of Bethune's story as literal and entire truth, that his 22-year-old priest of a brother was seduced-and-made-off-with by a 14-year-old schoolgirl, he still was outside his authority when he marked her. It was an illegal brand, wrongfully done, and arguably ruined her life. Vigilante justice ftw, eh?
> 
> **
> 
> I tried to keep the treatments in this what someone who learned his medicine on a battlefield might reasonably know.
> 
> Yarrow/'soldier's woundwort' - some people still use this to bring down a fever. Sometimes used directly on wounds. Ref. here: http://www.ryandrum.com/threeherbs.htm
> 
> Maggots - they don't just debride a dirty wound, there's some medical evidence they're antibacterial as well. Yes, people do study these things. I couldn't find any reports of doctors formally using them any earlier than the American Civil War, but, y'know, it seems like it would come up earlier.
> 
> The ointment is based on that used by Ambroise Paré (1510-90) who, as the story goes, once ran out of the hot oil he was using to cauterise wounds and mixed up an old Roman recipe from turps, rose oil, and either egg yolk or egg white (that last differs from account to account), and found that it worked much better than cautery. I couldn't find any details on proportions or what it would actually smell/look like alas. The rose oil and turpentine are both recorded as having antiseptic and antimicrobial properties. 
> 
> I got unrequitedly curious about what part of the egg Pare actually used, seeing as I was getting pings of folk remedies and/or medical research for the white (cuts, skin care, burns), the yolk (skin care), and oil of egg yolk, which I'd never heard of before (skin care, burns, hair). I'll spare the annoying research, but if someone threatened my life unless I made this stuff up I'd plump for egg white - it's available without having to render anything down, astringent to slow bleeding, and would dry to seal off the wound. (The 'balsam' that book!d'Artagnan totes around, of oil, vinegar, and rosemary, might kinda have worked? If it had a lot of rosemary oil in it.)
> 
> Which is all fascinating, but I urge you not to take any of this as medical advice: _I am not a doctor._
> 
> I also have a sudden vision of Aramis keeping a little pen back in the Musketeer Garrison, with two beautiful white chickens snugged down in the sweetest, cleanest hay ever, so he could have fresh eggs any time he wanted to mix up some ointment - and then a poor, hungry, and stupid recruit stole one to roast for dinner and FIRE AND BRIMSTONE RAINED DOWN.


End file.
